Burnley man trumps the President on Twitter

Dominic Collis

With one, mistimed and very unfortunate tap on his phone US President Donald Trump has turned an obscure Burnley IT consultant into an overnight Twitter sensation.

The bizarre tale unfolded on Tuesday morning when the Twitter-happy leader of the free world accidentally retweeted Burnley man Mike Holden calling him a "fascist".

The Trump retweet

Although the retweet was deleted 20 minutes later by the main man in the White House, Ightenhill man Mike had grabbed a screenshot and found himself at the centre of a global news sensation.

Mike (53) told the Burnley Express how in minutes he had gained thousands of Twitter followers and had been inundated with interview requests from around the globe when his own screenshot of Trump's gaffe was retweeted 13,000 times with 51,000 likes.

The former Ivy Bank and Burnley Grammar School student said: "I have an interest in politics and a lot of my tweets are related to that. I think American politics is at times ridiculous, certainly at the moment with Trump in charge, and so I always try to poke fun at him.

"I've noticed that his first tweet of the day always seems to be around 6-30am Washington time, what I call 'Trump's toilet tweets', so I always keep a lookout for them.

US President Donald Trump

"True to form, Trump had retweeted a Fox News story that morning which had suggested that he may pardon a Sheriff, Joe Arpaio,who had recently been found guilty of criminal contempt for defying a judge’s order to stop police targeting suspected undocumented immigrants.

"In light of the horrific recent incident at Charlottesville I thought it was in really poor taste and timing of President Trump to retweet it so I decided to call him a fascist. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that he'd retweeted me. He obviously hadn't read my tweet properly.

"In a matter of minutes the whole situation went bananas. Since then, my phone has never stopped with notifications. I've also had calls from the Washington Post and other big news outlets. The story has literally gone around the globe.

"On a serious note, though, it just makes you realise how careless Trump is, it's frightening. It's not like I'm some biting satirist, it seems he can obviously parody himself."

Mike, who is a member of the Labour party, said he was pleased that his tweet had brought a smile to so many faces and that messages of support had "outweighed Trump trolls" as he went from 600 followers to 4,300 overnight.

The Ightenhill man added: "My moment of fame will fade but I think it's worrying that a man with the nuclear codes could be so cavalier and careless with pushing buttons. The last day or so for me has been crazy but I'm sure I'll melt into obscurity as soon as Trump embarrasses himself again, which is likely to be very soon knowing him."